Comparison is the Thief of Joy

It can be hard to be happy with how God made you at any particular time but especially in the teen years. We feel we are too flat or too curvy, too little or too big, not enough or too much. And it doesn’t feel good.

Theodore Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” He’s right. It’s so easy in this world to compare ourselves to others. When we do that, we simply do not measure up. We tend to compare our worst with another girl’s best, and that makes us feel terrible. Feeling despair over who we are or what we look like causes us to reject ourselves.

And that is the opposite of what Christ does.

He says you are just right, right now. His invitation to you in this very moment is to accept your body, accept your personality, accept all of yourself. Just as you are. He made you you. He’s not waiting for you to become something other than who you are in order to be loved by him. He loves you now. He accepts you now. He not only accepts you, but he embraces you and he wants you to embrace yourself as well.